Almost a month after voters went to the polls in the first round of elections, Sierra Leone has chosen a new president. Julius Maada Bio, the candidate for the Sierra Leone People’s Party, secured 51.8 percent of the vote in the March 31 runoff against Samura Kamara of the ruling All People’s Congress. Maada Bio, who lost in the first round of 2012’s presidential race, was sworn in as president on April 4. This is not the first time Maada Bio has led Sierra Leone, as he was the military head of a transitional government for three months in 1996. [...]
If you need a break from the tawdry soap opera of American politics and the twists of national security policymaking these days, 2018 provides many milestones that recall actual American greatness, even instilling some hope for its renewal. Last week marked the 70th anniversary of the formal beginning of the Economy Recovery Plan, commonly known as the Marshall Plan. It was not only a financial infusion to jumpstart the struggling economies of Europe torn apart by World War II, but a demonstration of American planning and organization, as well as the role of visionary public and private sector leaders. It [...]
When the world’s fastest-growing refugee crisis barreled into a sleepy coastal town in southern Bangladesh last August, the prime minister in Dhaka pledged that her impoverished country would go without food if that was what it took to help the Rohingya fleeing violence from the army in Myanmar. Almost nine months later, that welcome is starting to wear thin as the exodus far exceeds past influxes of Rohingya refugees and settles into a prolonged, seemingly intractable situation, taxing one of the world’s poorest and most densely populated countries. Bangladesh, no stranger to the Myanmar military’s paroxysms of ethno-nationalist violence, has [...]
